Film and Media Studies > Calendar > New Documentary Formats

New Documentary Formats

NEW DOCUMENTARY FORMATS  Open seminar with John Corner

No registration needed.  Students and researchers are welcome

13:15: John Corner: System down!  Documentary discourse and crisis economics

The global financial crisis of 2008, which arguably still continues, gave rise to an interest in ‘total system’ accounts of the economy in various parts of the media, rather than simply reports of how well or badly various economic sectors were doing. Across the range of media genres, documentary had some of the richest options for mixing different source materials, including archive footage, and for running out expositions of length and complexity. This paper looks at some of the documentaries made about the 2008 events, including Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job (2010) and Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story (2009). As a brief exercise in comparative documentary aesthetics as well as ‘thematics’, it selectively examines the different criteria by which the works assess the global economic system. How is it located politically and ethically? What diverse range of images, voices, sounds and music are employed in portraying its character and consequences? How is the audience addressed and what pointers, if any, are offered as to ‘what should be done’ either by way of ‘repair’ or even ‘replacement’?

14:15: Break

14:30: Anne Mette Thorhauge: Video games as documentaries

The potentials of video games as documentary texts are often dismissed due to a common sense understanding of what constitutes documentary as such. That is, being programmed systems video games cannot claim any  "authenticity" or "indexicality" with regard to the reality described. They are, at best, reconstructions or simulations. However, applying a broader and less medium-specific understanding of documentary allows for a reflection on alternative ways in which video games may refer to reality. In this presentation I will discuss how Bondebjergs documentary genres and their respective epistemic positions may throw light on the ways video games can deal with reality. I will do this by comparing two games that in different ways claim to convey "real" aspects of the war in Afghanistan: Global Conflicts: Afghanistan and Kuma Wars Classic: Afghan Air Strike. 

15:15: Anne Jerslev: David Lynch’s Interview Project – between digital and analogue

On David Lynch’s Interview Project website (interviewproject.davidlynch.com) a new short documentary portrait was posted every third day from June 2009 until the end of May of 2010 together with photographs, written text and a spoken introduction by David Lynch. In each of the 121 documentaries a person talks about him or herself. In this presentation I would like to argue that The Interview Project performs indexicality on a digital platform and in the generic form of a website, which remediates film, photography, written text and graphics (a road map). I propose an understanding of Interview Project as a digital documentary work about time and the irreversibility of time, which provides on the website something similar to what Malin Wahlberg has called ‘the aura of the imprint’. It inscribes what Wahlberg has also called the ‘indexical powers of photography and cinema’ in a digital genre and simultaneously pays tribute to the new creative possibilities offered by this genre.